I've had a few back problems of late, a herniated disk from lifting my daughter basically. My physio suggests that sitting all day is a big problem, so I've decided to experiment with a standing desk.

I was looking at this particular DIY standing desk but saw you couldn't buy the components separately on the Ikea site. Then I realised my existing desk is an Ikea Galant already, and when I tried extending the legs up they do come up to the right height. With a few boxes and books (including two editions of Programming Perl + Learning Perl), I've managed to get a reasonable trial standing desk going.

Today was a bit of an unusual day. I'm coming down with what feels like it's going to be a shocker of a cold, so I ended up going back to bed when Holly woke up and slept through until 11:30. So it's been a bit of a half day. Good idea for the first day of this experiment.

So far so good. I've found myself a bit more able to focus on tasks, and combined with a Pomodoro timer to ensure I give myself breaks (as well as the more traditional "Get Shit Done" reasons for it), I feel okay. My back feels like its done some work today, tired but not sore. That's gotta be a good thing.

I'll keep trying this whenever I'm working from home and report back. If I make it a couple of weeks, I'll buy the Ikea TV unit and bolt it on. Also looking around for a small desk to continue as a sitting desk, so I can quickly switch between the two modes with a KVM switch. Probably clean my shed up a bit too and re-arrange things.